


Mirror, Mirror

by Innwich



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesiac Castiel, Burns, Horror, Hospitals, M/M, Mirrors, Mystery, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:52:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3689514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was hard enough being an amnesiac man who couldn’t remember his own face. It was worse when he started seeing hallucinations in the mirrors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror, Mirror

White light.

You opened your eyes to a white ceiling.

The curtains were drawn, leaving thin rays of sunlight wafting into the room. A bedcover was pulled up to your chest. It was stiff and scratched your arms. Your shoulder was wrapped in bandages. The mattress was firm under your back.

There was a tube stuck down your throat. You made an effort to breathe around it. Your throat constricted. You started to choke.

A red light went off by your bedside. A man in a white coat ran into the room, followed by several women in white uniform.

The man shone a light into your eyes and asked you questions about how you were feeling. The badge on his coat spelled out a name: _Dr. Harper_. He checked the machines that surrounded your bed, and prodded at you with various apparatus.

“Mr. Winchester,” the doctor said. “You were in a fire. The house collapsed on you.”

Was he talking to you?

“I’m happy to say your burns and head injury are healing,” the doctor said. “I’ll let your brother in to see you.”

“Who?” you said, but the doctor had left the room before you’d finished forming your question. You didn’t remember have a brother. Actually, as you racked your sluggish mind for information on your whereabouts, you didn’t remember much of anything.

A man burst into the room. He rushed over to you and pulled you in a hug. You didn’t know where to place your hands, so you mirrored his gesture and put your hands on his back uncertainly.

“I’m so glad you’re okay. Don’t ever do this again,” the man said. His words were muffled by your shoulder. “Jeez, you need a haircut.”

“Who are you?” you said. Another question squeezed to the front of your mind. “Who am I?”

The man pulled back from the hug and stared at you. “Son of a bitch.”

\- - -

The man was called Dean. That was all you could gather about him before the doctor asked to talk to him outside your room.

A nurse smiled at you as she wheeled you into a larger ward. You wondered if you were supposed to know her. You tried to recall any memory that you had, but your mind was void of information. There was a blank empty space that stretched on forever in your mind. It was as clean and pure as virgin snow. You couldn’t see anything no matter how hard you strained your eyes.

The landscape of your mind shouldn’t be this empty and stifled.

It disturbed you.

You asked the nurse for a mirror.

The man in the mirror was a stranger to you, but at least now you had a face to go with your name.

\- - -

You found that you didn’t need to sleep. You were wide awake while your wardmates were snoring away.

But when the head nurse came into the ward and found you reading the pile of information leaflets that you’d taken from the nurse station, she asked you to turn out the light so it wouldn’t disrupt the other patients. She made you promise to sleep.

With nothing to occupy your mind, you closed your eyes.

You fell into a meditative state that resembled slumber. You stayed like that until the nurses woke you for breakfast.

\- - -

Dean rummaged through his duffel bag, and pulled out a photo that was wrinkled at the corners. “That’s us.”

There were three men in the photograph, standing at what must be a beach, with the sea as the backdrop. It must have been a sunny day, because you’d been squinting at the camera. You’d smiled brightly with your arm around Dean and the other man in the picture.

You handed the photo back to Dean. “I wish I would remember that. It looked like a nice day.”

Dean tried to hide his disappointment, but you saw the slump in his shoulders before he covered it up with a grin. “Guess the picture doesn’t help, huh?”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Dean said. He patted you on the back. “You’ll remember.”

\- - -

You had a nightmare.

The dream had been covered in fire. You’d felt every searing tongue as flames licked at your skin. You’d opened your mouth to scream as fiery debris had crashed down. Then everything had turned white.

In the bathroom, you splashed your face with cold water, careful not to soak your bandages. The water washed away the sweat on your brows and cleared your head.

After the heat from the dream cooled, you looked into the mirror.

You were pale under the fluorescent lighting. Dull eyes stared back at you. You pushed your hair out of your face. You were supposed to know this person in the mirror, but it was as unfamiliar to you as the nurses that came into your room to check up on you.

It was weird to see that mouth turned down when you grimaced at yourself. It was like seeing a stranger imitating your movements.

You touched your cheek gingerly.

The image in the mirror shimmered, like a ripple was sent through it.

The shock made you drop your hand away from your face.

When you looked into the mirror again, your reflection had returned to normal. Your eyes were wide and your lips parted.

It must’ve been a trick of the light.

You rubbed your jaw.

The face in the mirror became distorted. The skin was bubbling and peeling away. It was turning raw and red. Blisters were popping and leaking pus. It cracked its mouth open and said, “You let me burn.”

You tore your gaze away.

After that, you kept your head down whenever you washed your hands at the sink.

\- - -

You only ate because the nurses told you to. You’d never felt that gnawing hunger that your wardmates had complained of when the nurses had run late with dinner last night.

But Dean frowned when he spotted the untouched roast beef on your overbed table. “Is it that bad?”

“You can have it if you want it.”

Dean bit into the roast beef and made a face. “It’s drier than a desert. I’ll buy you a burger from the diner across the motel where I’m staying.”

“I’m not hungry,” you said.

“Trust me. They might not have the best burgers in the state, but they’re still pretty good.”

True to his words, he brought you a burger the next day. The burger did smell better than the stew sitting on your table. Dean brightened up when you took a bite out of the burger, so you forced the rest of it down your throat.

\- - -

Days at the hospital dragged on when Dean wasn’t around.

You were strong enough to wander the hospital’s grounds without supervision. Some of the other patients were in the garden too, their families or nurses taking them out for an afternoon stroll. Though the sun was warm, a few men and women were crying to themselves on the benches.

The foods in the canteen were similar to the ones you were served in the ward. The sandwiches sagged in their plastic wrappings, looking sad and a day too old, much like the patients and doctors that roamed the hospital halls.

You spent most of your time gazing through the windows of the maternity ward. Babies were sleeping in rows of tiny beds behind the glass. The sight brought a smile to your lips.

Miracles came in all shapes and sizes.

When it was nearly time for dinner, you made your way back to your ward. You passed an open door. A deep voice floated out into the hallway, “He finally woke up.”

Curious, you peeked into the room. Dean was sitting next to a man that was lying on a hospital bed. The man was heavily bandaged. He was hooked up to an array of machines at his bedside. A tube was helping him breathe.

“It’s your turn now, you hear me?” Dean said. “You have to wake up.”

The man in the bed didn’t answer.

You spent that night wondering who that man was, but Dean didn’t mention him to you the next day.

\- - -

“Seen any hot nurses lately?” Dean said. He was leaning against the feet of your bed and grinning at you.

“I haven’t noticed.”

“Dude, what do you mean you haven’t noticed? It’s one of the perks of staying at a hospital.”

Dean spent half an hour pointing out nurses to you. It didn’t feel right to sexualize the people that had spent so much time taking care of you and the other patients. But it was the longest Dean had gone without mentioning your memories, so you nodded along to whatever he was saying.

You wondered if it was normal for your heart to squeeze so tightly in your chest.

That night, you stared up at the ceiling above you. Your wounds itched.

You wished Dean was here to talk to you. He could talk about anything and you wouldn’t mind, it would be good even if he wanted to talk about the nurses.

\- - -

If you slept too long, flames would creep into your dream. You would try to leap and evade the fire, but you would be dragged down by a weight that chained you to the ground.

You told the doctors about the dreams. The doctors said it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

You didn’t tell them about the hallucinations you saw in the mirror, where your skin melted off your hands.

“You let me burn,” the mirror said.

Instead of sleeping, you memorized the nurses’ routines so you could sneak out of bed easily.

During many of your nightly wanderings, you were drawn to the room of that bandaged man. You directed your steps to that room whenever nurses patrolled the maternity ward and you had nowhere better to go. Dean was often sleeping at the bedside of the bandaged man even though it was after visiting hours.

The man on the bed showed no sign of regaining consciousness. The only thing that ever changed about him was his bandages.

On the nights that Dean didn’t show up, you sat in the chair that Dean had practically claimed as his own. You watched the unconscious man and tried to remember why you kept coming back into this room.

You were drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.

\- - -

You sat behind the wheel of a black car with sleek lines and leather seats.

“This is Baby,” Dean said from the passenger seat. He was grinning so widely you could almost see all of his teeth. “Come on, dude. Not every day I let you sit in that seat.”

You put your hands on the steering wheel in front of you. The dashboard was covered in semi-circles and arrows and buttons. There was a stick on your right. For a long moment, you just sat there.

“It’s all in the muscle memory, right?” Dean said. “You don’t have to drive onto the roads. We can just do a loop around the parking lot.”

“I don’t think I know how to drive.”

\- - -

“You’ll get back your memories,” Dean said. “We’ll think of something.”

Those words grated on your nerves. You’d heard them from Dean and the doctors and the nurses. They spoke of the vague possibility of it, although your mind remained as blank as the moment you’d woken up in the hospital.

“I don’t think my memories are coming back,” you said.

Dean blinked at you like he’d been slapped in the face.

“I’m tired of trying to recall memories that I don’t have,” you said. “They’re gone and I don’t care about getting them back.”

“You can’t give up,” Dean said. “You have to remember.”

“Why is that, Dean?” you said. “Why is it so important to you that I remember?”

“Of course it matters,” Dean said, clenching his fists. “You have to remember for the people we’ve lost. They deserve that much.”

“And what good has that done you?” you said.

“It’s not about me.”

“What about me?” you said. “What good would it do me if I remembered?”

Dean had no answer for that.

\- - -

The doctors declared your burns healed. The scars on your shoulder would stay but they wouldn’t impair your movements. However, the doctors wanted to monitor your head wound and see if you would regain memories. For all his talk about the horrors of hospital stays, Dean didn’t press them to get you out of the hospital.

You wondered if it was because of the man in the room.

Dean didn’t ask you about your lack of memories anymore. You didn’t know if it was because of what you said or if he had ran out of things that would jog your memories. He still came to visit you and brought you food that you ate to appease him. At nights, he kept his vigil at the bedside of the bandaged man.

He never mentioned the man to you.

\- - -

It was past midnight when you lay awake in bed.

The hospital was alive with noises of people trying not to wake each other. They were silent to everyone but you and your sharpened hearing. You heard wheels squeaked as equipment was pushed past the ward. You heard your wardmates as they lumbered off to the bathroom.

It was like having a fly buzzing in your ear. It was bugging the hell out of you.

After the head nurse finished her round, you sneaked into the room of the bandaged man.

It was quiet in here, except for the steady beeps of the monitoring machines. You settled into the chair next to the bed, and watched the bandaged chest moving steadily up and down.

Against your better judgement, you closed your eyes.

You slept.

The dream was consumed by fire. A man with dark hair and angry eyes stood before you. His white shirt was covered in soot. “You let me burn.”

You didn’t know him, but you knew that voice. “The mirror. It’s you, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.” The man was burning. His flesh was sloughing off his bones. “You bailed on me the moment it got too hot for you.”

“Do I know you?”

“I gave you everything and you don’t remember me.”

“Who are you?”

“Does it matter?” the man said. “You don’t even remember your own name.”

The slamming of a door startled you awake. Dean was standing by the door with a takeout bag.

“What are you doing here?” Dean said.

“I saw you come in here every few days,” you said. It wasn’t a lie. “I was curious.”

“Oh,” Dean said.

“What time is it?” you said.

“Breakfast time,” Dean said. He helped you out of the chair, though you could walk just fine. “The nurses are looking everywhere for you.”

\- - -

The television was showing a drama about two police officers solving murder cases. You sat on the edge of your chair as you tried to figure out who the killer was before the officers did. The show always managed to throw you for a loop.

Dean, on the other hand, was staring through the television rather than at it. He was a million miles away though he was sitting right next to you.

You had a feeling you knew whose his thoughts were with exactly.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” Dean said suddenly. “You losing your memories.”

“What changed your mind?” you said.

“You don’t remember the shit we’ve gone through,” Dean said. “Sometimes I wish I can forget it too.”

You didn’t know what to say to that. This was the first time Dean had opened up about the past. It sounded too heavy for any one person to bear.

“Besides, you can’t miss what you’ve lost if you don’t remember it,” Dean said. “It saves you from a world of hurt.”

\- - -

The door to the ward creaked open in the dead of night.

There was another hour before the nurses were scheduled to do their rounds. The lights had been turned down save for those in the hallways. Footsteps approached your bed.

You breathed slow and steady, pretending to be asleep.

Someone shook you.

It was Dean.

“We’re leaving,” Dean said. His eyes were blood-shot and puffy. “I’ve brought your stuff.”

You pulled on the clothes. They were different from the scrubs that you’d been used to wearing in the hospital.

After you were dressed, Dean led you out through the back of the hospital, avoiding the nurses and doctors that were doing their rounds. The lights shone bright white bright white. The hallways there were colder and quieter than the rest of the hospital.

Dean drove you to an abandoned field. A pile of logs sat on the scorched earth.

“Give me a hand,” Dean said.

You weren’t surprised to see the stuffed body bag in the trunk. You and Dean carried it to the pyre. The body was still wearing the gown from the hospital. The bandages slipped and you caught a glimpse of scarred tissues.

Dean drenched the body in salt and gasoline.

The pyre caught fire easily. The flames snaked across the body. It smelled like burnt wood and meat.

You and Dean were standing far enough that the smoke was blowing away from you, but Dean was wiping at his eyes like the smoke had gotten in them. He didn’t say anything, so neither did you.

After the funeral, Dean picked up bags of alcohol from a liquor store while you stayed in the car. He drove you to the motel he was staying at. The room was mostly clean, the sheets were disturbed, and there was a duffle bag sitting at the end of one of the beds.

Dean switched on the television and put a bottle in front of you. He drained half of his drink in a long gulp. You sipped your drink. It stung your mouth and throat, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

You both sat on the couch and watched the movie in silence.

When you’d finished your alcohol and put the empty bottle on the floor next to your feet, Dean immediately put another unopened bottle in your hands. You hadn’t thought he’d notice you finishing your drink.

Dean fell asleep during a movie about an assassin running away from his former employers. You put a cover on Dean from one of the beds, when Dean mumbled, “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I couldn’t save both of you.” Dean grunted and turned onto his side. His was still sleeping and his cheeks were wet. “I’m sorry.”

You returned to sipping your drink until it ran empty. There was no one to make you sleep, so you watched movies after movies.

It was late afternoon the next day when Dean woke up. He groaned a lot and was feeling too ill to drive, but he bought you lunch from a fast food restaurant. The food tasted better than what you were used to eating in the hospital.

\- - -

Dean drove too slowly.

You watched towns after towns crawled by. On the third day of the road trip, you rolled down the window on your side, but there was barely any wind. You wished Dean would drive faster.

“Can’t you drive faster?” you said.

“You an adrenaline junkie now?” Dean said.

“No, but you’re driving too slowly,” you said.

“I’m going at the speed limit,” Dean said.

“The other cars are going faster than us,” you said.

“This is not a goddamn race.”

“Even that old lady is driving faster than you.”

Dean let out an unbelieving laugh. “Alright. Buckle up. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

Dean pressed down on a pedal and the car sped up.

The wind ran through your hair and tousled it. Dean led out a whoop and turned up the music. The wind and the music thrummed loud in your ears.

It was almost fast enough.

\- - -

The car was parked in front of a small rundown house at the edge of a suburb.

Sitting in the driver seat, Dean dug through a cardboard box and tossed you a badge. “We’re going as the FBI. He’s the father of the vic. He may know something useful.”

“Can’t you do this by yourself?”

“People expect Feds to come in pairs, so you’re coming too,” Dean said. “Just let me do the talking.”

You flipped the holder opened to the ID card. “You gave me the wrong badge, Dean.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“It belongs to an Agent ‘James Hetfield’,” you said.

“Fake names,” Dean said. “What we’re about to do isn’t exactly legal.”

“I think they’ll notice it’s not me in the photo.”

“Shit,” Dean said, scratching his cheek. “We’ll have to fix the badge. Think they’ll notice if I paste your picture on it with a glue stick?”

You squinted at the badge. You brought it closer to your face. The man in the photo looked familiar to you.

“I knew this man,” you said.

Dean froze. “I thought you said you didn’t have your memories back.”

“It wasn’t a memory,” you said. “I saw him in my dream.”

“What?”

“He said he gave me everything,” you said. “He said I left him to die. I don’t remember who he is.”

“Cas?” Dean said. His voice was trembling.

“Who?”

“You son of a bitch,” Dean said. There were tears in his eyes. “I gave you a hunter’s funeral. I mourned you.”

You glanced at the rearview mirror. Your reflection hadn’t done that thing where it became distorted and melted anymore since you’d left the hospital with Dean. You still didn’t like looking at your reflection, but you knew those hazel eyes and thin lips were yours. It was the one of the few things that you knew were real.

Mirrors never lied.

“Cas, look at me.” Dean shook you by your shoulders. “Is Sam in there with you? Can you let him out to talk to me?”

“I am not Cas,” you said, tripping over the strange name. “I am Sam. You told me I am Sam, Dean.”


End file.
